Our guest is Gabriela Gomes, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Strathclyde. She specializes in population dynamics and the modeling of herd immunity and her recent work suggests COVID-19 herd immunity may be at hand. We discuss how herd immunity thresholds are estimated and why she thinks classic models are flawed and must incorporate a measure of variation in individual susceptibility.

GUEST:

Gabriela Gomes, PhD: Twitter and Website

LINKS:

• Gomes et al. (May 2020 paper): Individual variation in susceptibility or exposure to SARS-CoV-2 lowers the herd immunity threshold in MedRxiv
• Aguas et al. (July 2020 paper): Herd immunity thresholds for SARS-CoV-2 estimated from unfolding epidemics in Medrxiv
• Britton et al. A mathematical model reveals the influence of population heterogeneity on herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2 in Science (Open Access)
• Kevin Hartnett. The Tricky Math of COVID-19 Herd Immunity in Quanta Magazine
• Fine et al. "Herd Immunity": A Rough Guide in Clinical Infectious Disease (Open Access)

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